March or Die

“I want to say this, and this may bother some Christians. I think you can be a good man without being a believer. What I don’t think is you can explain why you’re doing it.”

Coach Chris Hogan spent more than 20 years building young men through high school football, winning national championships along the way. Now he’s doing it full time through Atomic Masculinity, a men’s organization turned online community that he calls a call to arms for Christian men.

In this conversation with Jeremy Stalnecker, Chris explains why he named it “atomic” as a direct jab at toxic masculinity, why the lone wolf doesn’t last the winter, and why the men he worries about most are the ones who are isolated and off mission. He walks through the four pillars his entire system is built on, God, yourself, your family, and your service, and makes the case that making yourself your number one project is the least selfish thing you can do. Because when you don’t, your wife and kids get a second rate version of you.

He also gets into what accountability actually is, how it differs from mentorship, and the three things he would tell any man who wants to change but has no idea where to start.

CONNECT WITH CHRIS HOGAN
Atomic Masculinity and the Atomic Briefing newsletter: https://atomicmasculinity.com 
Booking and speaking: https://coachchrishogan.com 

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What does the Bible actually say about divorce? It's one of the questions Jeremy Stalnecker gets asked most through his work with veterans, first responders, and their families at Mighty Oaks. In this episode he walks through the main passages: Jesus in Matthew 19, Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, and what the rest of scripture says about abuse.

Jeremy starts with God's design for marriage. Our culture treats marriage like a contract: if you hold up your end, I'll hold up mine. The Bible describes a covenant, two people becoming one flesh until death, and a picture of Christ's love for the church. That's why he says divorce should never be the first option.

From there he gets into the harder questions. If divorce wasn't God's plan, why does it exist? When does the Bible allow it? He covers adultery, abandonment, and abuse, and he's clear on one thing: if you or your kids are in danger, God is not asking you to stay.

If you've already been through a divorce, Jeremy has a word for you too. God still loves you and still has a plan for your life. You're not a second-class Christian.

This is a big topic and every situation is different, so think of this as a starting point. Leave your questions in the comments.

If you're in an abusive or unsafe situation, get safe first and then get help. In the U.S. you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or visit thehotline.org.

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The doctor looked at Daniel Ritchie's father and asked if they should let him go.

Daniel was born without arms, a disability two ultrasounds missed, and he came into the world not breathing and not moving. His dad didn't need a second opinion. Less than two minutes later, Daniel was kicking and screaming.

But surviving the delivery room wasn't the hard part. By 13, Daniel hated his life. Bitterness turned into isolation, isolation into depression, and depression into wanting out. Then a friend invited him to a church lock-in he only went to because it sounded like chaos — and a youth pastor spent an hour walking a hostile 15-year-old through the book of Romans.

In this conversation with Jeremy Stalnecker, Daniel talks about identity, contentment, and why the modifier we put in front of "Christian" quietly runs our lives. "I'm not an armless Christian," he says. "Christ is the most important part of who I am. The armless piece is just the refining aspect in the story."

ABOUT DANIEL RITCHIE

Daniel Ritchie is an author and speaker who has spent eight years traveling full-time, sharing his story with churches, conferences, and organizations across the country. danielritchie.com

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Pastor Rich Cundall and his wife Laurie adopted four children. Years later, all four were in crisis at the same time and Rich walked into his own board of elders and asked them to decide whether he was still fit to lead.

He told them he hoped they would let him go.

They said no. And the third reason they gave him changed how he understands leadership: "We need an example of what it looks like to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. What it looks like to be broken and still trust Christ."

Sixteen years later, Rich is still the pastor at Hessel Church and he is careful to say that the story does not have a tidy ending. One of the four has been healed. The other three, in his words, are "still working on their testimonies."

In this conversation, recorded in front of a live audience at Hessel Church during the NorCal Men's Summit, Rich and Jeremy talk about what it actually costs to lead through adversity: why the church's instinct to hide brokenness forfeits its credibility, why a leader has to build his team long before the crisis arrives, and why Rich believes the very thing you think disqualifies you is the thing God intends to use.

"We impress people with our strengths. But we connect with people in our weakness."

Hessel Church: https://hesselchurch.org 

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"We just talk about boy band Jesus." Nick Freitas breaks down what biblical masculinity actually is and the five pillars every Christian man is called to build: spiritual, emotional, physical, intellectual, and professional.

Host Jeremy Stalnecker sits down with Nick Freitas, author of THE MAN BOOK, host of Making the Argument, husband of 27 years and father of three, for a conversation about why men quietly walked away from the church, and what it takes to bring them back.

Nick doesn't blame the culture and he doesn't hand out a 12-step program. He goes to scripture: what does God actually require of a man? Out of that comes the five-pillar framework he teaches, spiritual, emotional, physical, intellectual, professional, with the receipts for each one. Along the way: why "touchy-feely" church drove him off before special forces brought him back, why hyper-masculinity is the same error in the opposite direction, why he tells young men to get a "violent hobby" (and the caveats that go with it), what it means to be the patriarch of a multi-generational family, and why every phase of a man's life has a job attached to it, including the last one.

Get Nick's Book here: https://a.co/d/02m6Epqr 

Check out Making The Argument here: https://open.spotify.com/show/0PGCCatgQGZcatLmNSQ9oz 

Follow Nick on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCPFzA28Hw9tYDxXAeidDk6w  

If you're a man trying to figure out what you're actually supposed to be,  or you're raising one, start here.

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"Please don't ever make me bury a friend." For 24 years, police chaplain Chuck Price has shown up for cops on the worst days of their lives and 95% of the job is just sitting in a car with them, long before the worst day ever comes.

In this episode, host Jeremy Stalnecker sits down with Chuck Price, police chaplain, FBI-experienced, and executive director of Wixom Ministries, to explain what a first-responder chaplain actually does. It's not invocations and benedictions. 

It's a "ministry of presence": riding along, earning trust one shift at a time, so that when the line-of-duty death or the worst call comes, you're already someone the officer trusts. Chuck unpacks why he "can't carry their burden" (only walk with them), how he shares faith without ever pushing it, why patient presence beats forced evangelism ("If I'd pushed Jesus on you 15 years ago, would we even be here?"), and how to spot, or become, a chaplain who shows up for the right reasons.

If you're a first responder, a police family, or someone who wants to serve the men and women who serve us, this one's for you.

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"I spent my whole life fighting. I never learned how to suffer." Former pro fighter and SWAT officer Sean Kennard on a biblical view of pain and suffering and what a year of debilitating illness has taught him about God.

In this episode, host Jeremy Stalnecker sits down with Sean Kennard, Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, professional fighter, and former SWAT officer, who got severely ill a year ago (likely an antibiotic injury), lost nearly 50 pounds, and can no longer eat without his body turning food into "poison." A man who built his life on being a fighter is learning, for the first time, how to suffer well.

Sean and Jeremy work through what Scripture actually says about pain and suffering: why suffering is promised, not optional (John 16:33); the lament Psalms that never resolve (39 & 88); Job's honest anger; Romans 5, how suffering produces perseverance, character, and hope; and the God who is BOTH sovereign AND suffering, a high priest who has been there (Hebrews 4). You'll hear why God cares more about your sanctification than your comfort, why you can't "earn" your healing, and why hope, not the absence of pain, is the line between being crushed and enduring.

If you're in a long season of suffering that isn't turning the corner, illness, grief, a marriage, a wayward kid, a life that didn't go how you planned, this conversation is for you.

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"If you can't control your mind, when you get to the end of this, you will not be the same person." - Dr. Scott Peterson's father-in-law, a physician, told him that on the day he started chemo. Scott would later survive stage 3 colorectal cancer AND a stroke that hit him at 30,000 feet on a Delta flight to Atlanta and learn that real Christian resilience is built BEFORE the crisis hits, not during it.

In this episode of The March or Die Show, host Jeremy Stalnecker sits down with Dr. Scott A. Peterson, pastor at St. Luke's Methodist (Oklahoma City), former chaplain, former VP of Development at One World Health, and author of Choose Your Best, to break down his 4-Stage Resilience Model: Mindset, Intentional Actions, Community, and Discipline.

Scott shares the moment a blood clot in his carotid artery shut his body down on the exit row of a Delta flight, the three warnings his physician father-in-law gave him before chemo, the prayer that radically changed his life in a San Diego bedroom at age 40, and why most Christians get resilience wrong by leaning on "thoughts and prayers" instead of pre-deciding who they'll be when the crisis comes.

If you're a Christian man trying to build real mental toughness, not motivational fluff, but the kind that holds up when your body is failing, this conversation will change how you train your mind.

GUEST RESOURCES
Book: *Choose Your Best* by Dr. Scott A. Peterson (with Paul Rothwell, M.D.) - available on Amazon
Website: https://drscottapeterson.com 

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A thousand times a year, someone sits across the table from Jeremy Stalnecker and says: "I've tried everything. If this doesn't work, I'm not going to make it." How is a gentle and lowly Jesus the answer to that?

Dane Ortlund, pastor of Naperville Presbyterian and author of the runaway evangelical bestseller Gentle and Lowly, sits down with Jeremy to break down the Jesus most Christian men have never been taught. The Jesus who, as Spurgeon noted, only once told us what was in his own heart. The Jesus whose default is mercy and whose anger always requires provocation. The Jesus with nail-scarred arms who, according to 1 Corinthians 12, feels your trauma more acutely than you do.

This is one of the most theologically rich conversations on the channel - anchored in Matthew 11:28-30, with stops in Hebrews 1, John 14, Exodus 34, and 1 Corinthians 12. If you've ever pictured Jesus as a watered-down, decaffeinated, domesticated version of God, this conversation will reset that picture.

RESOURCES MENTIONED
• Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers (Crossway): https://www.crossway.org/books/gentle-and-lowly-tpb/
• Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ in Heaven for Sinners on Earth - the 400-year-old book that wrecked Dane
• Dane Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life (Crossway)

CONNECT WITH DANE
• Website: https://www.daneortlund.com
• Naperville Presbyterian Church: https://www.naperpres.org 
• X (formerly Twitter): @daneortlund

KEY VERSES
• Matthew 11:28-30 - "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden"
• Hebrews 1:3 - Jesus, the exact representation of God
• John 14:9 - "If you've seen me, you have seen the Father"
• Exodus 34:6 - "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger"
• 1 Corinthians 12 - We are the body of Christ

Subscribe for more interviews, biblical breakdowns, and conversations with men who've been there: https://www.youtube.com/@MarchOrDieShow?sub_confirmation=1 

Hit Subscribe, share this episode with your community, and drop a comment on what landed hardest for you.

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Ryan Ackerman did three combat tours with 1st Battalion 5th Marines, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the first push into Fallujah in 2004, and a return to Ramadi. Then he came home.

"It was a roller coaster ride without a seatbelt."

In this conversation, Ryan tells Jeremy Stalnecker, his brother from the same battalion, what it took to come back from absolute rock bottom. The lying to himself. The running. The career on paper that was hiding everything underneath.

And the moment he finally stopped.

This is a conversation about what every man avoids until he can't anymore: the truth about who he is when the uniform comes off, the title fades, or the season of life ends. And why the only way back is through.

LEARN MORE
First Battalion 5th Marines Association: www.firstbattalionfifthmarinesassociation.org 

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